


the secret i kept

by ThaliaClio



Series: cracked mirrors [4]
Category: Constantine (TV), Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of BAU Team - Freeform, Mentions of Chas and Zed, Mick and John are twins because Matt Ryan's face, Mick does not fuck around when it comes to his brother, minimal comfort and only kinda happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:32:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5580403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick knows what he’s doing. He knows exactly how many lines he’s crossed. He knows that he’s prepared to cross a hell of a lot more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the secret i kept

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this took so long. I've had it sort of half-finished for a while but I didn't quite like it until now.

John has never -- will never -- tell Chas this, but sometimes -- not often, not always -- _sometimes_ _,_ he hears things. Voices. Whispers in his ear and over his shoulder telling him that _you killed them_ and _just let us in_ and _the Devil has a special spot for you. a cage._

He tells Mick, though. Every time. Texts him in the middle of a case or at three in the morning or halfway across the world. Mick calls him instead of answering, most of the time, and they talk about everything but the words that slither into his ears like snakes, filling his head with venom and poison and so, so much fear.

The only time John doesn’t tell Mick, the only thing he doesn’t share, is this:

_you will die. it will be violent and bloody and painful. you will go to hell and you will scream and wish for that violent, bloody, painful death all over again. and your brother will burn the world around your body._

That voice, the one that tell him this _story_ , this _future_ , it doesn’t sound like the others. It doesn’t blow into his ears like the whisper of a sick man, or slide into his brain like a snake. It’s soft and sweet and sounds like Astra.

\--

_Hey, um. Johnny? It’s me. Your brother. Um. Beth… Beth is dead. I can’t-- Please answer your phone._

**_Click._ **

John is covered in ash and blood. His phone has been dead for two days and this is the first thing he hears when he plugs it in.

**Mickie Mouse**

**12:01am >>im sorry. **

**12:01am >>i really really am.**

**12:02am <<jst answr the damn phone**

**12:14am <<Please?**

The phones buzzes in his hand. 

He breathes once, hard, and steels himself because this time it's his turn to hold up his brother.

_“Johnny?”_

“Hey bruv. I’m… She was a good woman.”

And they talk. And Mick cries. And John cries with him. Because Beth was a good, good woman who deserved far better than she received and was good to his brother. And for just a little while John can ignore the voices and what’s to come. Because there are some things that matter more than what might be (what he knows, deep down in his bones, will be).

\--

Two weeks later Manny betrays him. The Brujeria are gathered behind the angel, and it almost looks like a painting against the red-pink light of a setting sun. John’s guts are only held in by his hands and a few spare strips of skin, and his tongue is two feet away so he can’t even say some pithy remark. He’s too busy choking on his own blood.

Manny walks away and he’s alone and then his phone is ringing.

John answers without checking the name because he knows already.

_“John no no no no. Please Johnny, -- John!”_

Over the sound of his brother screaming into the phone he hears another voice ( _Astra)_ \--

_And now it all burns._

And then he can hear nothing but his own screaming.

\--

Mick scream and screams and _screams_ , his voice fading into raspy pleas, _begging._

He’s alone in his apartment, kneeling on his bed. So very, very alone.

His chest is cold. It had _burned_ . There’s blood leaking from it, soaking into his FBI t-shirt in a macabre imitation of that bullet wound he got a few years back. There’s no _tha-thump_ beating above his own heart, and he doesn’t know if he misses the warmth or the beating more. _(That’s a_ **_lie, lie, lie_ ** _. He knows exactly what he misses the most. But he_ **_can’t_ ** _, and ---)_

He sobs, and he falls forward. Presses his face hard into the rough blankets. Digs his nails into his palm.

Mick dies, too, that night.

\--

Cooper tries to talk to him.

**3 unread texts. 2 missed calls.**

Gina tries to talk to him

**7 unread texts. 8 missed calls.**

Prophet tries to talk to him.

**14 unread text. 22 missed calls.**

He thinks Beth would have tried to talk to him, too.

_Ring. Ring. Rin--_

He likes the sound the phone makes when it shatters on the wall.

\--

Most of the time, John can’t think past the pain. Can’t process anything other than _stop_. Sometimes, though, he manages to find himself under the blood and the burning and the pain. _the voices were right_ , he thinks. And then he waits, something patient and _real_ under the pain. Because he knows what comes next.

\--

It’s been a month since Beth died, Prophet thinks with a twinge. It’s been two weeks since John died, he realizes, turning his phone over in his hands. Two weeks since anyone has heard from Mick.

He looks up from his phone and his hands and takes in the bull pin.

It’s too empty, too lonely.

Gina looks a decade older. Coop looks like a ghost. Prophet isn’t sure how he looks, but he knows it isn’t good.

A phone rings. The conference phone.

The three of them looks at each other blearily.

“New case, maybe?” Gina offers.

Coop just grunts and presses the button.

 _“Look, I don’t have much time, so please don’t interrupt, okay?”_ Mick -- _Mick_ \-- says in a rush. They’re all too busy gaping to say anything. _“Things are about to get really, really bad. Worse than serial killers and serial rapists and mass murderers. Bad like bloody monsters and demons and all that shite that hides under our beds. They’re coming out into our world and they’re bringing the darkness with them. I can’t-- I_ **_need_ ** _to do this, and it’s my fault, but I can’t --_ **_can’t_ ** _\-- help you. Just -- please, please don’t be heroes. Call this number -- (555)666-5656 -- for help. Tell them Mick sent you. Guys… I’m... I'm really, really sorry.”_

**_Click._ **

\--

That night the world ends.

A gaping, flaming hole opens in the middle of New York, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Seoul, Bejing, Cairo, Tripoli, Berlin, -- _everywhere_.

Gina cuts of a ma-- a  _vampire_ ’s head.

Cooper burns down a house with a ghost’s bones inside.

Prophet throws a souvenir bottle of holy water onto a woman with black eyes.

They call the number.

_“I don’t know who gave you this number, but I’m ab--”_

“Mick sent us,” Prophet says, panting and bruised next to a blood soaked Gina and a slightly singed Cooper.

_“Shit. Fuck. Who're you?”_

“We’re his, uh, team. At the FBI. I’m Prophet, but Gina and Cooper are here, too.”

The angry voice sighs, breath staticky over the phone. _“God fucking damn it. He went and fuck--. Fine. Look, my name’s Dean. Where are you?”_

And this is how the new world is born -- in flames and blood and phone calls.

\--

Mick knows what he’s doing. He knows exactly how many lines he’s crossed. He knows that he’s prepared to cross a hell of a lot more.

John might be the one in Hell, but Mick has more than earned his rightful place right next to him.

He remembers, once, telling Chas that he would drag him down to Hell to save John’s soul. But Chas died right next to John, both of them trying to save Zed, who had died long before them both. So Mick allows Chas and Zed to have their peace, doesn’t rip them back down to Earth and Hell and the thin line that divides them.

\--

Through the copper of the blood in his mouth and the ringing screams in his ears and the sulfur in his nose and the heat against his skin, John can _feel_ something coming. He hears the voices -- slippery and diseased, louder now that they aren’t only in his head -- he hears the fear. They know something’s coming too.

Over his heart the skin is shredded, burnt, blistered and throbbing.  _Tha-thump_.

When he smiles, teeth bloody, it feels like an open wound.

\--

There is no grave of their own to crawl out of. When the brothers emerge it’s from an ancient crypt in Ireland, surrounded by the bones of people they never knew and flaking bloody symbols on the walls. Part of the front wall has crumbled and daylight streams in, one, two bright beams in the dark.

John stands away from them. Mick stands with John.

John doesn’t think he’s human anymore, doesn’t feel contained within his skin. Mick meets his eyes, and those aren’t the eyes of a man but they are the eyes of his brother.

“Out of the frying pan?” Mick offers wryly, holding out a bloody, sooty, blistered hand.

“And into the fire,” John confirms, taking it with his one pale, smooth one.

\--

Sometimes Prophet forgets that there was a world before this -- before the Rising. But then he’ll hear stories -- from other survivors, from monsters themselves -- of two men who aren’t quite men, men who share the same face and the same soul.

He’ll pause in his sip or stop cleaning his gun _(he never hesitates to kill the monsters -- not after everything they’ve taken)_. He’ll pause and stop and pray for a just one second, remembering two laughing faces and a shared roguish accent.

But then the world explodes all over again and Prophet forgets all over again too, lost in blood and misery in this burning world.

\--

John doesn’t hear voices anymore, at least not ones he shouldn’t be hearing.

Right now he breathes in the smell of smoke and watches a burning sunset while his brother boils tea.

He finds he likes this burning world just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> And so the world ends and begins.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me and this story for so long! I hope y'all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.


End file.
